Both Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael have used the High Renaissance ideals to characterise their sitters to create a naturalistic and fashionable portrait.
In the last decade of the fifteenth Century the independent portrait emerged, its credit going to Leonardo da Vinci. .
High Renaissance portraits let the artist characterise the individual and idealise their form to the perfect ideal of the time. For men this included a restrained pose, jewellery to show wealthiness. For women, their skin was pale and smooth hairstyles that were in style at the time was the ever popular plucked hairline style.
Portraits were naturalistic and the sitter looked as if he or she lived and breathed. An artist cold characterise their sitter through a number of devices such as pose, expression, gesture, clothing, jewellery, makeup, hairstyle, setting, symbols, colour, light as well as many more. .
Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519) studied under Andrea del Verrochio and was admitted to the painter's guild in 1472.
Leonardo's human dissections led Leonardo to have a greater understanding of how the human body worked. Leonardo believed the body was like a complex system of weights and levers, and his anatomical studies led him to created highly naturalistic and realistic portraits of his sitters.
Leonardo also used his natures studies with which he created caricatures. His caricatures were studies of human features which he exaggerated and using his light and shade studies, Leonardo had another device to character his individuals.
Raphael - born Raffaello Santi or Raffaello Sanzio (1483 - 1520) studied under Pietro Perugino. Perugino's stylistic characteristics which Raphael has acquired can be seen in Raphael's organisation of composition. Raphael's idealistion of beauty was created by using Peruginesque methods, calm, contemplative expressions and small mouths. Raphael gradually changed his techniques, assimilating the new methods of Leonardo da Vinci.
